We Have Moved

We have completed our move to James House in St Neots, Cambridgeshire, UK. The new building is just a short distance from our old premises but several times the size, giving us space for our business to grow. This means that we will be taking on more staff in 2008. See our Employment Opportunities section below for a list of the positions currently available, and then check our careers website at http://pico.jobs regularly for updates.

Our new address is at the end of this newsletter.

New Range of Low-Cost PC Oscilloscopes!

With the new PicoScope 2203, 2204 and 2205 PC Oscilloscopes, everyone can now afford to use Pico’s high-performance measurement technology in their laboratory, factory or workshop.

The new PicoScope 2000 Series PC Oscilloscopes are extremely versatile, with an oscilloscope, spectrum analyser and arbitrary waveform generator included in every model. The compact, portable scopes fit easily in a laptop bag, and their robust cases have three BNC connectors – Channel A, Channel B and Signal Out – and a USB connector.

The new PicoScope 2000 Series scopes obtain their power from the USB 2.0 interface, so there's no need for batteries or an external power supply. The USB port also delivers high-speed data to your PC to give you a responsive, high-resolution display.

The scopes are bundled with full-featured copies of our PicoScope and PicoLog software for Windows. These programs are powerful but easy to use, and let you export data in a variety of graphical, text and binary formats. Also included are drivers and example programs.

The new PicoScope 2000 series scopes are available from our local distributors, or direct from Pico Technology.

PicoScope 5204 Wins Best In Test Award

The PicoScope 5204 PC Oscilloscope has won Test & Measurement World magazine’s “Best In Test 2008” award for the best PC-based instrument to be released in the last year. This, our top-of-the-range scope, provides two channels plus an external trigger and an arbitrary waveform generator, a probe-tip bandwidth of 250 MHz, 8-bit resolution, and a real-time sampling rate of 1 Gsample/s (single channel). For repetitive signals, its equivalent-time-sampling mode increases the sampling rate to 20 Gsamples/s. The PicoScope 5204 also has a huge record length of 128 Msamples.

We’re delighted with this award, but we are not letting it rest there. We believe that the PicoScope 5204 deserves to win the Test Product of the Year award for 2008. What do you think? Why not visit the Test & Measurement award Online Ballot and cast your vote?

Questions and Answers

Here is a selection of the questions that have cropped up recently on our support forum.

Q. My PicoScope 3206 won’t start up reliably on my laptop. I am using PicoScope 5.16.2. What could be wrong?

A. Some customers might not be aware that, even after the release of PicoScope 6, we are still supporting PicoScope 5 with regular updates. The latest version is 5.18.0, which you can download free of charge. [This customer’s problem went away when he installed the latest release. He was also kind enough to describe the PicoScope 3206 as “phenomenal”!]

Q. Can PicoScope and PicoLog export data to Microsoft Excel?

A. Yes, they can. In PicoScope 5, click File, then Save as; set the file type to .TXT and click Save. You can import the TXT (tab-separated values) file directly into Excel. In PicoScope 6 and PicoLog the procedure is the same, but you have an extra option of saving the data in CSV (comma-separated values) format.

New EnviroMon Sensor Map

EnviroMon Sensor Map (ESM)

Our New Zealand distributor, Metermaster, has produced an enhanced version of our well-established EnviroMon environmental monitoring system.

The new software works with our existing EnviroMon hardware and configuration files but offers a huge list of benefits, not least of which is the sensor map that displays measured values on a floor plan of your client’s plant. Another very useful feature is the ability to send detailed SMS alarm messages to selected recipients based on which alarms are active.

Software releases

Our latest software releases are available as free downloads. To check which release you are using, start the software and select Help > About.

About this newsletter

To make sure that your Pico newsletter reaches your inbox every month, add listmaster@picotech.com to your email address book or safe list. If you found this newsletter useful, please recommend it to your friends and colleagues. Back issues are available from our newsletter archive.

By subscribing to our newsletter, you agree to receive one email a month plus no more than two special announcements a year. We will not use your email address for any other purpose unless separately agreed with you.

Testimonials

The kit (2408B) is of obvious quality, easy to setup and calibrate and the free to download software has a reasonable learning curve. Superb kit, superb support, what more can I say.

Rop Honnor

I have been using my 4224 PicoScope for years. I travel abroad so this has been ideal due to its physical size. Storage of waveforms on my Laptop is very easy allowing me to quickly email waveforms to my Colleagues.

Andrew

Not many USB scopes works on Win & Mac & Linux too, so that proves me that guys from Pico really cares about us, customers. This made my decision much easier when I was looking to buy an USB scope.

Raul Trifan

We have been using Picoscope 6404D for quite some time, and are amazed by its accuracy and powerful emulations while working with numerous signal evaluations.

J Mohanty

PicoLog TC-08: This is a very nice unit that works consistently and reliably.

Jeff Hulett

It is a great scope. I had a weird problem - it did not work on one of my PC’s. Customer service gave me first class service. If I could give 6 stars for customer service - I would do so.

Niels Larsen

Perfect Partner for Development of Encoder controlled Stepper Motor Actuators. Since the included software is really stable, this type of device is a great tool for great tasks!

Helmut Schoettner

A superb piece of equipment worth its weight in gold

Nigel Clinch

So simple to use & beats any other I have ever used hands down.

John D Samsing

Great functionality in a compact size. I really like moving the mouse pointer to a position and having the Time and Voltage display the values at that point. Calibration equipment is a breeze with that feature.